Specialized hobbies have always been a market for specialized gear, and competitive target shooting is a perfect example. Today, we have a set of P.J. O’Hare sight covers form the 1920s or 30s, along with a micrometer sight adjustment tool to show you. The sight covers were to protect the sights form physical damage, but also to protect the carbon blackening on the sight faces from being smudged or wiped off. The sight tool allows precise 1/2 minute of angle click adjustment of the sight on a 1903 Springfield, which is other with just free-sliding. Neat!
Prototype
Thompson’s .30-06 1923 Autorifle: Blish Strikes Again
RIA’s catalog page for this rifle This is a Model 1923 Thompson Autoloading Rifle, one of a batch of 20 made by Colt for US military testing in 1924. The system is designed on the […]
Artillery
RIA: Hotchkiss Revolving Cannon Reproduction
The Hotchkiss Revolving Cannon was developed in the 1870s as a competitor to the other manually-operated machine guns of the era, guns like the Gatling, Gardner, and Nordenfelt to name a few. What made the […]
Accessories
The Good Idea Fairy Strikes: American Trowel Bayonets
The United States first experimented with a combination trowel and bayonet in 1868, producing 200 experimental examples made from standard socket bayonets. This was immediately followed by an additional 500 Model 1869 trowel bayonets made […]
Another area of match-showing paraphernalia that (I at least) find interesting is the bondage-gear clothing jackets, gloves, eye patches etc. How long before people start doing bio-engineering and cybernetics for example to make the skeleton able to “lock up”?
I think it was Ross Seyfreid, who said that he realised that the expensive fancy gear that his fellow competitors were showing up with (and in), was their attempt to “buy ability”
Rather than them putting the extra practice in to develop themselves.
I’m struggling to think of any other gunzine columnist who has the knowledgeand shooting skills that Seyfreid has
And who’ll be as honest and pass up an opportunity to endorse some widgit (or some obscure new cartridge) that you absolutely must have
This is why I find Hi-Power so annoying. I think that type of shooting is in decline; when I have gone to places like Camp Perry it is mostly retirees shooting; very few young people. It is an equipment war.
The sights on the M1903 are indeed things of beauty, as well as being totally unsuited to a weapon of war.
The idea of a soldier being able to hit a man sized target much beyond 300 yards is a fantasy. The supposed ability to adjust sights to obtain hits at 2000 yards, at a target sporting enough to stand stock still whilst you adjust your windage makes no sense whatsoever.